Sarah spoke with the American thriller writer, Douglas Preston, with whom Spezi had been working on a book dealing with the “Monster of Florence”, who killed “16 people between 1968 and 1985 that led to one of the most expensive, most notorious criminal cases in Italian history.”

Preston had this to say:

[On Saturday morning], unexpectedly, an independent three-judge panel annulled the imprisonment of the Italian journalist Mario Spezi and ordered his immediate release. He was set free unconditionally, not even under house arrest. The judges clearly did not think very highly of the evidence—or rather the lack thereof—that Judge Mignini and Chief Inspector Giuttari had presented against Spezi. While Spezi’s legal problems are far from over, at least he is finally out of the grim Capanne Prison.

My friends in Italy tell me that the enormous publicity surrounding the case, in Italy and in America, was an important reason why the panel took the unusual step of overruling a fellow judge and annulling Mignini’s order of imprisonment.